HEALTH & EDUCATION

Health & Education

We all want the best care possible for our horses. The Heath & Education section covers both Learning Institutions, Organizations as well as many sources for equine assistance including Veterinarians and Farriers.

For those who want a to formally study horses, the Education section includes College Riding, Equine Studies, and Veterinary Schools. Learn about the wide variety of horses in the Horse Breeds section. Supplements and Treatments Therapy are also included in the section.

Everyone can learn from Fine Art and there are some specialty Museums that might surprise you.

Horses as a therapy partner enrich the lives of the disabled. These facilities are listed in our Therapeutic Riding section. To help children and young adults build confidence and grow emotionally, please see the resources available on the Youth Outreach page.

Looking for a place to keep your horse? You can find it in the Horse Boarding section. Traveling? Find a Shipping company or Horse Sitting service if your horse is staying home!

Want to stay up to date with the latest training clinics or professional conferences? Take a look at our Calendar of Events for Health & Education for the dates and locations of upcoming events.

Do we need to add more? Please use the useful feedback link and let us know!

By Jane Savoie

Connection means that you’ve connected your horse’s back end to his front end. Think of your horse’s back like it is a suspension bridge or a strung bow. If your horse’s neck is round, but he doesn’t touch the reins (there are loops and a lack of contact), he’s “behind the bit.” Some horses even look like they have what’s called a “broken neck.” This expression refers to the fact that the highest point of the neck is at the third vertebra rather than the horse’s poll.

Draw reins and other gadgets won’t help your horse understand how to come honestly on the bit—instead, he’ll often adopt this “behind the bit” position. Gadgets create a false frame so there’s no real connection. “Fiddling” with the bit or “sawing” on your horse’s mouth gives you the same false headset. Rather than going through them, he “sucks back” away from them, or breaks at the third vertebra.

When your horse consistently goes behind the bit, show him how to take a contact with your hands by teaching him to go “forward through his body.” Let me elaborate on the word “forward” first.

There are different aspects to being “forward.” Forward is a direction. For example, your horse can travel straight forward over the ground. He can also travel sideways and forward, like in a leg-yield. You also want your horse to “think forward.” This means he takes responsibility for his own energy, and he’s also reactive to your driving aids.

When your horse is either behind the vertical or behind the bit, he needs to go forward through his body. Think of his body as a parallelogram. If his profile is behind the vertical, his hind legs are out behind his body to the same degree. You need to shift the parallelogram in the opposite direction so the hind legs come under the body and the poll comes up.

To teach him to go forward through his body so you shift the parallelogram, do this exercise:

1. Go on a circle in posting trot.

2. Close your legs to ask for a few strides of a lengthening.

An excerpt from Yoga for Riders: Principles and Postures to Improve Your Horsemanship by Cathy Woods.

When going for a walk or jog, some of us innately feel what gait, swing, and motion is optimal. If we’re paying attention, we know what feels smooth and uses the least amount of energy yet works our muscles in a safe, effective way. However, others of us have not learned proper alignment, or we have developed bad habits around our posture and movement. The physical aspect of yoga is a practice that helps us improve in these areas so we move better, become less sore, and avoid injury.

Yoga also means spending integrated (and preferably uninterrupted) time with yourself, for the purpose of refining your body and mind. The yoga mat and meditation cushion are ideal places to come to know yourself better—a place for personal "groundwork" and "collection," so to speak. After I’ve spent time on the mat doing yoga postures, I am more keenly aware of my body. My muscles feel engaged, and I’m more cognizant of how to properly use them. The residual effects linger throughout the day. This translates into a more efficient use of my body during all my other activities—for example, when lifting a hay bale, I engage my legs more to keep strain off my back, and I am careful to grasp and lift the bale evenly, so I don’t risk straining a shoulder.

by Nikki Alvin-Smith

The bountiful benefits of the sun’s rays bring joy to the hearts of horses and humans, especially for the winter weary residents of colder climes.

But the sun is not good for everyone. Staying sheltered out of the heat and burning beams can be especially important for creatures great and small, especially the young, the elderly, the fair-skinned and the cancer prone. Here are some shade ideas that offer an economic method to address the issue of too much sun.

Give A Horse A Choice

The shade of the spreading chestnut tree may work in poetry for Longfellow (actually it was rather appropriately a horse chestnut tree that shaded the smithy), but it’s not so brilliant as a shelter for horses in an large open field. Even if we forget the risk of lightning strike during a storm, the presence of large trees within a pasture that are neither harmful to horses due to possible ingestion of their toxic fruit, seeds, leaves, or bark are few and far between.

A hedge provides almost no benefit at all in regard to avoidance of the sun’s rays, save for a limited time of possible shade provision early morning or at sunset, neither time being particularly helpful as these times are certainly not the hottest part of the day.

The sun climbs high in the sky during summer months, and avoiding its harsh focus is impossible without a roof under which to hunker down.

For the horse, walking freely out of the paddock directly into a cool horse stall through a Dutch door is heaven indeed. Not only does the sun disappear from view, the incessant buzzing and biting insects usually halt at the doorway and ‘buzz off.’ A double win.

This week’s episode focuses on the new strain of rotavirus that has been uncovered by the UK Gluck Center. Dr. Emma Adam goes into depth about the discovery, research and current treatments for this possible life-threatening type of foal diarrhea.

by Dr. Eleanor Kellon, VDM

"Performance horse" makes us think of things like speed work, endurance, upper level eventing and showing, but it's much more than that.

Let's define performance horses as those being asked to perform work in excess of their regular activity.

Feral horses travel as much as 20 miles per day in search of adequate food, water and salt. If you consider that as a baseline, horses grazing on good pastures or standing around in a stall or paddock all day have a long way to go to match it. Not so for a horse being ridden.

Keeping things at the walk for a moment, the feral horse is doing a lot less work than one carrying a rider. If you doubt that, try going about your daily activities wearing a back pack containing 1/5 of your weight. Carrying weight roughly triples the energy burned. An occasional stroll through the fields is one thing but if your horse is regularly doing trail rides, he's a performance horse. So is a horse or pony taking care of beginner riders several hours a day.

Obviously there is a difference between those horses and a horse in endurance training or any other extremely strenuous effort but they are more alike than you might think in the ways their bodies have to adapt.

As always, calories is the easy part. Increased calorie requirements depend on the individual metabolism (e.g. Thoroughbred versus air fern Morgan), duration and intensity of exercise. Your, or your trainer's,. experience with the individual and work type will determine how much to feed. The bottom line is always to maintain an appropriate body condition score.

However, when the speed of the work increases to trot or canter on a regular basis, this requires an adaptation of the muscle metabolism above and beyond what is needed by a feral horse moving around primarily at the walk. Carrying weight and advanced movements also increase demands on the muscle compared to what the horse's genetics provide at a baseline.

A robust response to the demands of exercise is facilitated by a targeted blend of key amino acids, minerals, vitamins and metbolites plus adaptogens to support a balanced stress response. Some horses struggle in specific areas such as breathing or have muscular challenges like meeting training milestones or muscular bulk.

by Dr. Eleanor Kellon, VDM

It's never bad to be aware of things that may be toxic to your horse, but precautions can be carried too far if you don't know the details. Yes, selenium is a potentially toxic mineral (they all are) but deficiency is much more common.

An owner contacted me because she had a hay selenium assay done which showed she was feeding about 3 mg per day from the hay, but she was horrified to realize the horse had been receiving another 2 mg per day on top of that. The bare minimum requirement for an average size horse is 1 to 2 mg/day.

However, bare minimum requirements are a long way away from toxic and even the 5 mg/day is considerably below any intake that would be dangerous. It is estimated an average size horse would need to take in at least 20 mg/day to be at risk for chronic toxicity - i.e. toxicity that takes weeks to months to show up. Acute toxicity takes over 1500 mg/day.

Naturally occurring chronic toxicity can occur with hays having over 5 ppm selenium ( = 50 mg in 22 lbs of hay) but this is rare. Natural toxicity is more likely in animals grazing on very high selenium soils where wild selenium accumulator plants, which contain several hundred ppm selenium, are growing. The highest selenium soils in the USA occur in pockets of Wyoming and South Dakota. These soils are high saline shales with an alkaline pH.

Acute toxicity causes a neurological derangement called "blind staggers" and is fatal. Chronic toxicity, "alkali disease", causes loss of mane and tail hair plus disrupted hoof growth resulting in separation of the hoof capsule at the coronary band. Another symptom of selenium toxicity is a DMSO or garlic-like odor on the breath. Recovery from chronic toxicosis takes up to 10 months if the hooves slough off. Again, both of these are rare.

Does omeprazole have any benefits?

Yes, particularly for ulcers that are found in the upper squamous region of the stomach that is not protected by a mucus layer. Short term usage is usually not problematic as long as care is taken to wean the horse off of it, lest there be a rebound acid effect.

But usage beyond 4 weeks, or giving your horse omeprazole for other reasons, is not a good idea. Firstly, it almost completely eliminates stomach acid. Stomach acid should not be treated as a nuisance and removed! It is absolutely necessary for protein digestion. Without it, your horse can experience protein deficits, which can result in loss of muscle, depressed immune function, poor digestion, and hormonal imbalances.

In addition, stomach acid is your horse’s first line of defense against damaging microbes that he may pick up off the ground.

Furthermore, omeprazole inhibits calcium and magnesium absorption, as well as other minerals, potentially damaging metabolic pathways and bone health.

But there is a better way

Tetanus: Your Horse’s Risk May Be Greater Than You Think — Photo courtesy of Zoetis

By Kevin Hankins, Senior Veterinarian, Equine Technical Services, Zoetis

Unvaccinated horses face a fatality rate of 75%

All horses are at risk for being exposed to tetanus. If your horse has exposure to soil, other animals and manure, he is at risk. Tetanus is easily transmitted, and if contracted, can be devastating to horses, with a fatality rate of 75%.¹

What is tetanus?

Tetanus is a bacterial disease caused by the invasion of Clostridium tetani in puncture wounds, open lacerations, exposed tissues or surgical incisions. Present in the intestinal tract and feces of horses, other animals and humans, the bacteria can be abundant in soil and can survive in the environment for years, creating a constant risk for horses and people. Clinical signs begin with hyperresponsiveness to noise or movement and progress to a horse having erect ears, third eyelid prolapse, flared nostrils, elevated head, stiff or erect tail, and a stiff-legged gait. Symptoms can advance to muscle spasms, convulsions and death by asphyxia.

“I’ve recently seen tetanus cases in a few horses, and it is devastating to lose a horse from a disease that is very preventable,” said Leslie Schur, DVM, Desert Pines Equine. “Whether you have a young foal, a recently purchased horse or a horse with an unknown vaccination history or a horse that isn’t current on their annual vaccinations, their risks for contracting tetanus significantly increase.”

It is crucial to work closely with your veterinarian to ensure your horse has received protection against tetanus.